Hi everyone 
M/25/5”9/158
My bloods just came in which show that several of hormones are out of wack and I have no clue on how to proceed next…
I’ve been feeling like crap for close to a year now and the Doc keeps labeling off as having panic attacks, depression, hypochondriac etc…
The symptoms I am experiencing are as follows:
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Non existent working memory, feel slow mentally most of the time.
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Feeling on edge 24/7, tremors and absolutely everything startles me.
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Cold hands and feet.
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Pains in my flank area (adrenals?) that seem to get worse if experience high stress situations.
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Extreme muscle weakness and shakiness.
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Super irritable (even the most insignificant things set me off)
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Anxiety
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Joints and muscles feel weak and ache
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Can’t seem to put muscle on and my lower belly fat doesn’t budge no matter what I do.
You definitely need thyroid meds. Your thyroid is underactive and your pituitary is kicking out thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) to get it going again, hence the high TSH.
Your estrogen is way too high for your test levels. This could impact fat loss, depression, etc.
Your prolactin is super high and probably the cause for some of your problems and your cortisol again is super high and can be linked to a multitude of problems.
Where are you living? In the US, I would tell you to get to a good hormone therapy doctor and start from there. If you are in the UK, based on what I’ve read here, you’re going to have a harder time getting treatment.
Either way, your Dr is harming you by disregarding the way you feel and blaming it all on bullshit. Get a NEW doctor.
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The problem i see is your cortisol. Stress can fuck with literally every part of your body, from DNA unraveling to hormone surpluses/deficiencies. Worse is that most of your symptoms can be related to stress.
What have you done to mitigate stress factors in your life? You don’t need to answer, but every good doctor will facilitate treatment in the following manner:
- lifestyle changes (including therapy if applicable)
- medication
- surgery (not applicable in your case)
To be a good doctor, they have to know that all other methods have been exhausted. Only then will their treatment involve medication.
On a side note: have you had your pituitary checked out? High prolactin in men is really uncommon and usually linked to pretty unfortunate diagnoses.
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I thought my thyroid levels looked fine due to T4 being high and T3 being in Range, no? I have a bottle of Thyroid-S NDT that I could possibly try for that to see if I feel any better?
My estrogen has been up and down in sept 2021 it was 118 (range 41-159) which wasn’t to bad and before that on April 2021 it was 108 (range 41-159).
Regarding my prolactin and cortisol, can these both be caused by a pituitary issue, such as a tumor that is secreting these hormones which in turn possibly messed my thyroid up in the process?
How should I go about getting these issues tested, anything in particular to ask my gp for? And I live in Norway by the way but have been previously in the UK for the past 9 years, the NHS blew me off and tried to give me SSRI’s
Instead so going to try my luck here and have an appointment on the 27th of Jan
The thing is i literally feel on edge over nothing for some reason even at rest, at the time I took this test I was at home for the whole week doing nothing but resting and eating so find it very strange…
Regarding what I have done to mitigate stress, I have tried meditation but find it hard to do due to being jumpy and started at even the smallest of sounds.
I also have tried therapy but it did not help me a lot as I have really bad working memory and brain fog so can’t remember most the things my therapist talked about over the phone appointment. SSRI’s made me feel emotionless and slower… and no I haven’t had my pituary checked.
What tests should I ask my doc to do for investigating my prolactin?? I am going to an appointment on the 27th?
Seems possible. Based on a quick internet search, high prolactin and high cortisol are indicative of Cushing’s disease. You need to see a Endocrinologist soon
Everything except potentially the hypochondriac here makes sense from what you just described:
Meditation doesn’t work unless you believe it works, and therapy isn’t exactly something you “try”, its a lifestyle change and one that usually goes on for a significant period of time.
Did you try a few different SSRI’s? Some will work for you and some wont, this is individualistic, requiring trial and error.
I’m going to make a suggestion that you should take with a grain of salt. IF you are a hypochondriac, or even have those tendencies (not judging), you probably shouldn’t take my next suggestion.
I would suggest a google search along the lines of “high prolactin in men + cause” to give you a more thorough understanding than I can reiterate.
I think it is important to note that very few hypochondriacs believe they are hypochondriacs, and it takes a great deal of honest self-reflection to realize if this shoe fits. It is also based in confirmation bias, and usually validated by people who go looking for an explanation for what’s wrong with them due to an exorbitant number of tests - which eventually find something that isn’t right.
Anyways, I’m rambling. I don’t want to accuse you of something, and I hope you don’t take anything I’ve said as accusatory. I just see the symptoms of extremely high stress/nervousness and know it can lash out in ways that don’t always make sense.
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I understand what you are saying but I find it strange that I started feeling like this out of seemingly nowhere, You know? Just boom and unable to handle even the smallest amounts of stress, everything irritates you and you can’t remember worth for shit which makes doing normal stuff like work and socialize with friends really hard for me… I hope that I can somehow convince my doc to atleast get my Pituary and adrenal glands look at and if nothing is abnormal regarding those two then I would be more than happy to try ssri/snri’s but I will be careful as I heard those things are notorious for causing other type of problems 
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I have only currently tried lexapro and found initially it helped some with atleast the anxiety aspect but it made me feel very spaced out and like the world around me wasn’t real if that makes sense? I thought maybe this has to do with me growing up in a disfunctional family and all that jazz but I feel that something weird is going on with my adrenals as I keep having flank pains which gets worse with intense excercise and high stress moments… I do apologize if I don’t make sense sometimes as English not my first language but I am trying to explain to the best of my
Ability 
Without becoming an unlicensed therapist, think back to when this started for you. Then consider what changes happened in your life around that time. Family, friends, money, living situation, weight gain/loss, work, daily routine, etc. There is a chance this happened due to some underlying cause, but it is more likely an outside factor than something truly health related (insert “mental health is health” comment here).
I can’t comment about much of anything for SSRI or SNRI medications - I haven’t taken or needed any myself. I do know that many of them have an adjustment period, and some will work better for you than others - otherwise I have nothing else to add regarding this. I’m a “treat the root cause” kind of guy, medications often just band-aid the actual problems that need fixing.
will need to take a trip down memory
Lane then to see if there may have been an event that could’ve caused this to take place thank you for taking the time to comment on my post, I would like to ask you one more question, if you don’t mind? Say I had low T aswell or
Went to a TRT clinic and they decided to treat me, would TRT help reduce cortisol levels by any chance? Just curious.
Happy to help!
I do not believe increasing T levels would have an effect on cortisol as the relationship is usually reversed there. High cortisol usually causes low T. That being said, if you go to a TRT clinic - they aren’t interested in your health, they are interested in your wallet; they can/will prescribe you medications because you will be paying them for it, not because it helps you.
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Awesome, that’s all I needed to know i Will try incorperating a daily meditation routine in the Morning and before bed and also work on reducing stress where possible. I also will push my doc to do an MRI of my pituary, Ultrasound of the Adrenals and also a referral to try Cognitive behavioral therapy as I heard it works better than medication in some cases.
hopefully i will find some relief and some normalcy in my life.
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I hope so! If you haven’t yet, I recommend getting some form of exercise in daily - even if its’ just walking. I’m the type of person who needs therapy. A LOT of it. The gym is my therapy, but it’s not that way for everyone. Find what works for you.
Funny enough, excercise is what’s kept me sane this year Even though it though it sucks to feel like i am making no progress, you know? I used to be heavily into calisthenics/street workout before this stuff happend to me and have since been working out on and off mixing bodybuilding style work with weighted bodyweight stuff… but I will definitely try to keep up with the lifting whenever I have the energy and strength to do so I also have 4 dogs so I walk pretty much 8K-10K steps a day, atleast I have energy for that lol
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A lot these symptoms can be linked to a thyroid problem, including the high prolactin. Thyroid problems can be intermittent and don’t always have to be the result of a consistently low hormone state.
These symptoms can be caused by stress as well.
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Hi there systemlord I actually did try Thyroid meds in the past (June 2021-
- September 2021) and found that a lot my symptoms went away such as joint and muscle aches, lump feeling in my throat, general cold feeling all over my body was greatly reduced which cause me to try cold showers but it was also during the summer so could’ve been the heat?? I tried T4 only at first but that made me ache and hurt even more then I did 25mcg T4 and 6.25mcg of T3 (both selfsourced) this caused me to feel pretty good overal with a TSH of around 1.85 and FT4 and FT3 both low in range which I found really strange as I thought T3 elevates FT3 and greatly lowers TSH?? I happen to have 500 Thyroid-S 60mg caps, do you think it would be worth it to try it for atleast 2-3 months while slowly working my way up the dosage and monitoring where possible?
Many thanks once again!
So if you felt better on a T4/T3 combo of thyroid meds, then it sounds like you figure things out, right?
Some people who have boarderline low thyroid will experience more problems in the colder months.
Thats the thing, i thought i knew but at the same time didn’t want to self medicate and having to source meds/pay out of pocket for labs everytime… better to be supervised by an endo right in most cases but what do i know…
This is not always the case. I’m sure its true for most but my wife is using a HRT clinic for both men and women and they are really aimed at getting you to your best possible self.
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